


Stark, Bro

by Broba



Category: Homestuck, Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Homestuck Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-17
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the hell? When I saw a kinkmeme prompt for a crossover between the Strider boys and Ironman, what else could I say? Suddenly an idea popped into my head, so I did a scribble of a ficlet. I amy or may not do more, depends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The day had finally come that college was to begin, and Dave was no closer to understanding it all. His brother could hardly blame him, after all the kid was, like, five? six? They didn't understand this kind of crap. Bro was trying to do the best he could for the little guy, but Dave just kept bleating on about how he didn't want to move up-state to hang around in some stupid dorm while his brother went to classes.  
  
Bro was packing away more of his identical white shirts into a backpack roughly along with a layer of puppets, while Dave stared accusingly from the door. Bro ignored him, for a while, but the kid had really nailed the cold dead stare. Bro was obliquely proud of that, and also annoyed that he was such a kickass teacher sometimes.  
"Listen Dave, this is happening. It's a thing, and we're going."  
"I don't want to go! Fuck this!"  
"What, you want to stay here on your own? How long you think that's gonna work out for ya, little man?"  
They had been over this before. Many times.  
"I'd be better off then following your loser ass!"  
"Harsh, little man, harsh. Look at my bleeding fuckin' heart. Here, you want your dagger back? Let me just get that for ya here-"  
Bro mimed pulling a dagger out of his heart painfully, and staggered across the floor to present it to Dave, he went all out on the bit and mimed the blood flowing copiously, all the while maintaining the most serious and deadpan expression. It was a perfect bit of irony and Dave couldn't help twitching a smile. Bro ruffled his hair fondly.  
"It's gonna work out, Davey. So long as we're together we'll figure shit out. And besides, when all this is done I'll get some shitkickin' job making robots and shit."  
"What's wrong with how things are now?"  
"Times change. This is how it's gonna be."  
Bro looked down at him and tilted Dave's chin up with a finger.  
"You with me?"  
"Okay Bro, I'm with you."  
"Damn fuckin' right. The Strider boys for the win."  
  
They pulled all their crap together, and got ready to pull the last of it down to Bro's horrible car, when their front door was opened from the outside and a man walked right into their lives unannounced. He was as tall as Bro and then some, and casually took one of the bags from Dave and walked right back into their lounge and dumped it on the floor.  
"We won't be needing these just yet, let's hold off on moving out okay?"  
The Striders stared. Bro's fist tightened on the strap of his holdall in a way that Dave could tell meant he was ready to make a fight of it and about a second away from doing so. The odd man looked around critically, taking in their apartment in a glance. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and hair that Dave had to admit was pretty cool, and when he ran a hand over his chin thoughtfully a gold watch glinted at his wrist.  
"I like it," he said, "I mean, a little bohemian for my taste really, and where's the bar? But what can you do in this economy?"  
"Who the fuck are you," said Bro quietly, "and how far d'you reckon you can get without kneecaps 'cause you're leavin' here without 'em, man."  
"Who am I? Don't you read the papers? I guess I'm not on the front of enough of them- Pepper, take a memo- more front pages."  
Behind them, a woman stepped through the doorway and rolled her eyes, "I'm sorry about all of this, Mister Stark likes to make an entrance."  
  
Dave stared, she looked amazing. He'd never seen a lady who looked like the ladies look in movies before, but she did. She even smiled at him as she walked in and extended a hand to Bro politely.  
"Pepper Potts,"  
"My secretary," called out Stark from the lounge.  
"It's a little more complicated then that. Call me the brains of the operation."  
"Um, hello?" Stark leaned around the doorway to the lounge and pointed up at himself, "billionaire genius? Pioneer in robotics, artificial intelligence? And she's the brains?"  
"I'm the common sense, then," Potts sighed and directed Stark back into the lounge, beckoning the others to follow, "could we all just sit down? It's been a long flight, and your elevator is out. Those stairs are murder!"  
Dave grinned and elbowed Bro in the thigh, "I warned you about stairs, man."  
Bro frowned and allowed himself to be directed to his armchair. "Stark? Tony Stark? The actual motherfucking Tony Stark?"  
"Right on the motherfucking button," Stark grinned, he had a winning grin that was infectious, "and I came all this way to make you a deal. I don't do that all the time you know, mostly I make my business partners jump through a few hoops first. Keeps everyone on their feet."  
  
Pepper stood in the corner and surreptitiously glanced at a PDA. Dave sidled over and made a show of leaning boredly against the wall, making it very clear how bored and entirely uninterested in the whole situation he truly was, just like he'd seen his Bro do. She glanced down and grinned.  
"You're cute,"  
"Lady, you're okay too I guess, lady," Bro had taught him that when a chick was hella sweet you call her lady, all the time.  
Pepper smiled wryly, "you and your brother live here all alone?"  
"Yeah, lady, I guess," Dave shrugged boredly, "it's okay I guess lady."  
"Mmm-m-m, I can tell. It's a very... manly... place." She looked pointedly at the arm of the couch on which the very animated Tony Stark was talking at Bro. Across it lay a sad, grey looking sock that no one was paying attention to.  
"Yeah, well, me and my bro don't need anyone else," Dave puffed up a little and before he forgot added, "lady,"  
  
Bro was listening to Stark, he had little choice. When the man got started, listening to him talk was like standing in the face of a hurricane. It wasn't that Tony was impolite or unwilling to listen, he just had so very much to say on every subject that he had to get as much talking as possible done in the time available, and even then he gave the impression that he was just delivering the edited highlights.  
"So you can go off to, what, Texas state," he was saying, "and do the right thing, be all responsible, get some job in an office somewhere? Really? People do that? Anyway. You can go right ahead if that's your thing or you could come work for me, right now, and start on a salary better then you'll work up to after ten years brown-nosing your way up the ladder anywhere else. I only hire the best and I keep the best by making sure no one else pays them better."  
"You want to hire me?" Bro was saying slowly.  
"Well sure I do, I figure what better time to offer someone a life-changing decision then the day they are about to give up everything they know to embark on the unknown, right?"  
"What even kind of thing- I mean, why me? I ain't got a degree even yet."  
"Let me tell you something," Tony leant forwards and stared up from under dense eyebrows, punctuating his words with chopping gestures, "there's no time like now, and it's not coming back again later. I went through what you might call a life-changing experience, and it taught me one thing- you can achieve more with your own two hands and a little desperation then you ever can in a comfortable office with no pressure. I don't care about some piece of paper, you have skills and you can make up any gaps in your knowledge on the job."  
"What do you need me for? I mean you got all... factories and shit. Actual factories."  
"You'd be surprised how little you can accomplish using a lot. So changing the subject, I was sitting there reading my webfeeds one morning when I saw this-"  
  
He pulled an immaculately folded printout for his inside pocket and passed it over. It was a blurry photo taken from a news site about a certain rogue device that had piled across three lanes of traffic and nearly caused a pile-up. The owner of the robot was being actively sought by the police. Bro stared at it studiously and carefully folded it up again.  
"Don't know anything about that, man."  
"Would you- would you pardon my French okay? That's bull shit. I have my ways of finding things out, and let me tell you the cops know you built that little battler there and it's a matter of time before someone a lot less fun in a party then me is coming knocking. As a point of fact I have pulled a whole hand of strings to keep them away for this long."  
"What, so you tryin' to roll me now?"  
"This whole story? This incriminating looking picture right here? Forget it. Stick it in the shredder because it's done- bang, it's gone. I already-" he nodded at Potts, who returned the nod and made some notes on her PDA, "-I just fixed it for you. Done. But here's the thing- that robot kept it's balance autonomously while navigating a three lane highway at rush hour without taking a scratch, and according to witnesses it actually somersaulted over one car. Now that takes skill. How many gyroscopes you even put in that thing?"  
"One," said Bro quietly, "on a motion control gimbal."  
"You're kidding, right? That's- hey I want to stop this right now and give you a little round of applause, can we do that? We can do that. Here look, this is me, Tony Stark, industrial colossus of the twenty first century, giving you a goddamned round of applause, I love it. That's the kind of thinking I need! That's why I'm here."  
  
Bro sat back in his chair and contemplated what he was hearing. From his point of view the robot had been a failure. He had fine-tuned that balance system for a week, designed it to perfection. the thing was meant to be a challenge, but on the first test run something had glitched in the programming and instead of fighting it had leapt out of the window and Bro hadn't seen it again until he'd turned on the evening news to find out that his creation had nearly caused a disaster. That had been just another reason to want to get the hell out of town. He looked over at Dave, still entranced with the lovely secretary chick, he could tell that his little brother was growing up a whole lot right then and there, he'd be a real heartbreaker one day. He could tell Stark to get the hell out and take his own chances, but how could he turn down a chance to give Dave everything he would ever need again? No more sitting in the dark because they couldn't afford the electric bill 'till the end of the month. No more cold beans out of a tin and telling each other that it was how rock solid bros did dinner time.  
"All right then," he said softly, "what happens now?"  
"Everything," Stark grinned, "you don't even know. Everything!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hahahahah for some reason I have had several DEMANDS for more to be done of this. It took a while arriving, but here we are!

The industrialist and one-man military industrial complex that was Tony Stark would never dream of arriving in anything less then a style all of his own. After a private jet ride which the Strider boys sat through stonily, they had been bundled into an executive limousine just to be taken the short distance across the airport concourse to the Stark industries helipad, where a helicopter ride to their destination across town waited.  
  
The jet had been something else entirely. In their wildest fantasies the Striders would have given anything to live in such splendour, and it was nothing more then Stark's transportation. There had been massive flat-screen televisions, games, music, everything. It was all that they could want and more, and it was nothing more then the plane trip- the actual destination was like a new and gaudy planet.  
  
Dave and his brother were led directly from the pad at the peak of the tower into a wide reception room which formed an arc around the rim of the building and had glass panelling in every direction, exquisite furnishing in both restrained and elegant tastes. The place was truly a sanctum for a man who could with confidence look out on the world laid out beneath him and know that it was his for the taking. Stark himself affected a practised louche ease as he wandered over to the bar and casually flicked open a couple of long-necks before offering Dave a juice. Bro took his drink and sat warily on a massive curving couch, while Pepper saw about finding something exciting for Dave to look at. For his part, Dave was in heaven and gleefully ran grubby fingers over everything- exploring, touching, demanding to know the purpose of every device and the contents of every receptacle.  
“Cute kid,” remarked Stark as he sat down in an armchair opposite Bro, “just you looking after him, right?”  
“Just me,” said Bro guardedly, “we don't need anyone.”  
“Of course, I get it.”  
  
Stark looked at him. Bro stared back, but he wondered if he would be so bold without his shades. Stark had an attitude about him- not the careless, ironic cool detachment of the Striders but not too dissimilar. Bro realised that he was in the presence of a man who's ego simply could not be threatened, because in the world of Tony Stark there was nothing at all that could even touch him. Stark didn't have to pretend not to give a shit.  
“Level with me,” said Bro, “what's this all about? You want my gyro design, just offer me a buncha cash, it's yours. Why all the...” he motioned about, indicating the room, “...why all this?”  
“Okay here it is,” Stark began talking again and it all came out in a gushing breathless torrent, “I respect you, I like your work, I think you have a lot to offer with the right encouragement and a stimulating environment.”  
“Uh huh,”  
“And there's the fact that I'm going to be embarking on a project. I'm going to need people around me who are committed- the kind of committed you only get from people who really need to be there. I need people who are going to see this project and give everything they got to it- no holding back, no indecision. Besides the fact that you are the second best robotic engineer in this room right now.”  
“So how do you know I'll give a shit about your project?”  
Stark grinned, “wait till you see it, man. You're going to go nuts.”  
  
Meanwhile, Dave was taking full advantage of the situation. He couldn't believe that people actually lived like this. Every time he thought he had explored the entirety of the penthouse floor it turned out that there was more. Mister Stark even had an entire library of his own, and a room specifically devoted to video games. Dave was in heaven and Pepper indulged him as he went from one trinket to the next excitedly. When she told him that this was only one floor, and the tower extended downwards for many more, and that Stark actually owned the whole place- he nearly died. They sat in the kitchen on opposite sides of the breakfast island, a bar with inlaid marble tile surfacing. Dave sipped cautiously at his juice, while Pepper checked her PDA and nodded in satisfaction. She was never separated from it, and compulsively had to keep re-checking whatever it was that she was looking over.  
  
She looked up at last to see Dave staring around the room reflectively. The boy was like a miniature tornado when he wanted to be, but he also had a surprising stillness to him at times. The way Dave slowly turned his head with the occasional quick glance in different directions put her in mind of a curious little bird.  
“Dave?” She asked softly, “something the matter honey?”  
“Uhm,” he suddenly seemed at a loss for words and swallowed hard.  
“What is it? You can tell me, I'm here to take care of things.”  
“Are...” he leant forwards a little, conspiratorially, “are we poor?”  
“What?”  
“Me and my Bro, are we... poor people?”  
Pepper blinked. She wasn't entirely sure how to answer that. In comparison to Tony Stark, almost everyone was poor.  
“David,” she said slowly, “are you upset?”  
“It's just, all this stuff! I thought we had things pretty sweet, you know? But Bro doesn't have any of this stuff. I never even seen so much food in one place. You guys have everything!”  
Pepper pursed her lips and thought about it for a moment.  
“Dave, how long have you lived with just your brother?”  
“Forever, I guess. It's always been just me and Bro.”  
“And he's always there to take care of you, right?”  
“Yeah, my Bro is kinda awesome. He's pretty much the best.”  
She reached over and patted his hand, “you're not poor people, Dave.”  
“Yeah I guess, but I mean, Mister Stark has, like, a billion TV's.”  
“Even Mister Stark wishes he had someone to be there like your Bro is there for you.”  
“Heh. Sucks to be him then?”  
“Pretty much,” she grinned and ruffled his hair. Dave tried hard to remain stoically aloof but he couldn't help twitch a smile.  
  
For his part, Stark knew that once he introduced Strider to the automated fabrication plant in the tower there would be no stopping him. No roboticist of his calibre could resist the possibilities. Stark made it his business to never be far from the tools he needed to make his imagined creations real, and as far as he was concerned stark Industries existed to provide him with those tools. The general betterment of mankind and so on was the happy side-effect.  
  
Powerful mechanical arms swayed and danced together under the guidance of the central computer plinth where the two men stood. The system was designed to be intuitive but powerful, and Stark could build more or less anything he could come up with, running through entire design and prototyping cycles on his own.  
“So what do you think?” Stark grinned and clapped Strider on the back, “marry me?”  
“Oh yeah. I am your blushing bride of science. I will be your virginal prom date and make it my first time in the back of your limo. Be my forever guy. We're making it happen.”  
“Well this is awkward, I should have brought champagne and we're stuck with a cheeky Chablis,” he held up the bottle; they had both been drinking.  
“Don't ever change, dude. You know how to treat a girl right.”  
This went on.  
  
Stark gave Bro the introduction to the machinery of the fabrication plant, but he was expected largely to learn the ropes himself. Stark was less concerned with showing Bro the ropes then with introducing him to the grander concepts that they would be working with.  
“So let's talk gyroscopic balance,” he announced abruptly.  
“Sure, hit me.”  
“So, picture it if you will, a mass approximating, oh, six-fifty pounds with a centre of mass three and a smidge feet high moving at high speed-” Stark began tapping figures into the computer, describing what he needed, while Bro watched.  
“You're describing, what, a mecha? Some kind of robot suit?”  
“The future in personal powered defensive armour. And you're going to help me make it happen.”  
“Sounds like a shitty animé. I'm in.”  
“Okay, and also it flies-”  
Bro sighed. “Look, if you want to yank my chain that's fine, hell it's your dollar, but try to keep the bullshit interesting at least.”  
“Don't believe me?”  
“It'd never work.”  
“How come?”  
“Well look at this-” Bro ran a finger down the lines of numbers and statistics, “the power and fuel requirements alone are ridiculous, it'd be as big as a house.”  
Stark looked serious for a moment, “imagine if those problems were already solved.”  
“Bullshit.”  
“No shit. Power source, fuel supply, done. Out the window. Get a broom kid, there's glass everywhere.”  
“How.”  
“I can't tell you yet. I still want to work out-”  
“How!”  
Stark clucked his tongue and ran a hand over his chin, “the main power plant for flight mode Is paired twin repulsorlift vectored jets. That's a series of counter-rotating magnets working on an ionised air vortex to create a thrust stream of plasma.”  
“'Kay.”  
“That's a lot of thrust out of a tiny package, and it's all running off a miniaturised power supply.”  
“Miniaturised how?”  
Stark grinned and clasped his shoulder. “Remember the Stark Industries arc reactor?”  
“Yeah there was a big stink about it in the papers. Future of electrical power generation.”  
Stark made a 'ta-daa' motion with his hands.  
“What,” said Bro, “it works?”  
“Not just works, I got it down to production capacity and one-one-thousandth the size.”  
Bro paused, mulling this over slowly. “Let's just say you're not shitting me. That changes... everything! Jesus, the whole economy... shit I can't even...”  
  
Stark held up an admonishing finger, for once he looked deadly serious. “Listen. I had to go through a lot, let's say I had a transformative personal experience that brought me a new found respect for life. This thing is going to be big, but it'll be big my way. That means keeping wraps on it until I know it's going to be used right.”  
“What's the right way to use this shit? I mean this looks like some high-powered military ordinance you're describing.”  
“That's the thing! I'm not in that business any more. Forget it, I don't want to be an iron-monger handing out weapons to the highest bidder. I'm better then that now, and I'm going to hold the world to my standards if it wants a hand in the cookie jar, you feel me?”  
“Huh. I figured you'd just want to sell something like that as quick as possible. I mean, stable arc reactor technology? You could just walk off with the bank.”  
“I already have a bank, I think. I'm pretty sure there's a Stark Bank somewhere, ask Potts.”  
“So. You have a power source like nothing on earth, a robotics factory the size of Newark and you're building an armour suit. What's the plan boss, gonna go out fightin' crime?”  
“Hey why not? Seriously, what's the best way to do something good in the world- you just go out and do it, man! That's how my father did things, I'm just following in the family tradition but in my own way.”  
“Great. I'm working for Batman.”  
“Admit it, that's pretty cool.”  
“Fuck yeah.”  
  
Three months later, and the elder Strider stood in the middle of the main machine shop work floor, concentrating. He had his katana in one hand and a control box in the other. All around the periphery of the room clustered massive and inscrutable complexes of machinery. On the control plinth Stark and Dave stood watching while Pepper stood behind them pensively. She nervously put a hand on Dave's shoulder, but if the boy was worried he remained ice cold and composed without a single sign of it showing. Below them, Bro raised an arm and signalled them, and Stark nodded down at him.  
“Is this how he always tries out a new thing?” Stark asked quietly in bemusement.  
“Yeah,” said Dave, “he says the only way to know if shit's working is to cut it up and see what survives.”  
“David!” hissed Potts. She was trying to get him to cut back on the cursing, unsuccessfully.  
  
Strider thumbed a button on the control box and placed it on the ground, before nudging it away with his foot and adopting a watchful stance with his blade. The sound of a commotion erupted almost immediately as a white blur barrelled out of the nest of crates and robot arms at the end of the shop floor and charged. It was a robot of Bro's own design that he had built and equipped with the latest iteration of his stabiliser system. The thing was crude to look at but had an incredible turn of speed as it ran.  
“Hey hey!” said Dave excitedly, “it's Squarewave!”  
  
The little robot span on a clanking foot-cup and dropped to its' side, sliding towards Bro in a shower of sparks that flew out behind it in a spray of glowing golden spume. Bro leapt lithely upwards and vaulted over Squarewave, who spun and flipped back up onto his feet. The robot was vibrating with energy and clenched metal fists in his battle-stance. Bro swept in with a triple attack of lethal diagonal slices in different direction, and Squarewave ducked and weaved past them. As Bro aimed a horizontal cut at midriff heigh Squarewave balanced effortlessly on the rims of his foot cups and leant backwards, swaying underneath the blade with the élan of a limbo dancer.  
  
Stark was leaning over the guardrail and laughing.  
“Holy God damn, you see that? He did it! The son of a bitch did it!”  
Pepper brought the knuckles of her left hand to her lips pensively and just nodded. Dave smirked and bounced up and down gently on the balls of his feet,  
“That's my Bro, he's pretty much the best at this.”  
“Yeah,” said Stark thoughtfully, “I can see.”  
  
Later. Dave was enjoying the time alone in the apartment that Stark Industries had provided the Striders, while his Bro was hard at work. The project, whatever it was, had accelerated significantly and now occupied most of Bro's time- and Dave was taking advantage of the opportunity to play on his Bro's sweet decks. Pepper Potts let herself in and rapped on the lintel with a knuckle to let Dave know she was there. The Striders had become so accustomed to her presence that she felt free to come and go as she liked but they were still very much a couple of guys and she had the presence of mind to let people know she was coming before walking into a room. The first time she had walked in on Bro unannounced while he was doing something unspeakable with puppets had been the only lesson she needed. The air vibrated with harsh electronic beats interspersed with ironically terrible samples.  
“David?” She called. She saw his head bobbing in time over the decks and raised her voice, “Dave!”  
The beats cut out suddenly and Dave looked up, “sup?”  
“Nice to see you too, Dave.”  
He sighed dramatically, “hello Miss Potts it is nice to see you. How are you, would you like a cup of tea and stuff.”  
She smiled and sat down on the couch, discreetly crossing her ankles, “oh come on, I'm not that bad am I?”  
Dave smirked and pranced out from behind the decks, giving her an elaborate bow, “would madam like some Earl Grey in a tiny china cup? The weather has been absolutely shockin' and goodness gracious-”  
She laughed and clapped her hands, “how long have you been working on this bit? I'm almost tempted to see how far you're going to push the ironic politeness.”  
“All the way, Peps, gonna push this thing down the stairs and stand there and laugh and laugh. Did I ever tell you about stairs?”  
“Urrrgh, I can't keep up with you some times. Why do you have to make me feel old.”  
Dave sat next to her and punched her playfully on the shoulder, “'cause you aaaaare!”  
“Between you guys and Tony, I don't know how I manage.”  
“So quit. You can work for my Bro, we need a maid.”  
“Hey now, watch it, you!” She laughed.  
“You know you love it, I'm way to hella adorable.”  
“You're going to slay 'em when you go to school finally.”  
Dave groaned, “aww Pep-per-er! Not this again.”  
“This again. It's been too long since you attended regular classes and even I can't cover for you forever. You don't want to go to school, we can get you a tutor- but you have to pick an option.”  
“I just need my Bro, don't worry so much.”  
Pepper looked at him, and waited for his blank shades to swivel in her direction. She had his attention. “Dave. What does your brother need?”  
“We got each other.”  
“Dave, what does your brother need? Looking after you forever?”  
“Hey! Not cool!”  
She placed a hand on his shoulder, “he could take care of you and keep running from job to job making ends meet, maybe even give you some kind of an education, but what does that leave for him?”  
Dave stared at her stonily. “Not cool.”  
“Am I wrong? Dave, I'm not here to get in between you two. But your brother is doing good work- important work. And you've seen how he's taken to it, he loves this stuff. If you don't start thinking about what you need to get done then he's going to have to start thinking about it for you again and you know he's going to put his life on hold for as long as it takes to deal with you. So what does that leave for him?”  
Dave looked down at his lap, “it's always been me and Bro.”  
“And it still is, Dave! Just because you go to school and do the things you're meant to do doesn't make him anything less.” Pepper sighed, taking a deep breath. “You know why Mister Stark keeps me around? It's because I push him to do the things he won't think of doing himself. I don't like being the bad guy here, but it's my job to take care of stuff like this even if it means you don't like me any more.”  
“Uh.”  
“Mmm?”  
Dave clenched his jaw for a while. “Me and Bro get to stay together no matter what, right?”  
“Right.”  
“Okay. I guess... I mean it's just helping my Bro out that's all.”  
“You mean you'll let me sort out classes for you?”  
Dave nodded mutely.  
“Do you hate me?”  
“Yeah. Check the flames of seriously ill rage.”  
Pepper smiled wryly, “it's okay. I think I can deal with the sick burns.”  
  
She stood up and went to the door, only turning when she heard a soft cough behind her.  
“Uh,” said Dave.  
“Yes?”  
“I guess we're still cool really.”  
“Well, duh. What do you think, you could hate this face?” She grinned and tapped her cheek with a finger, winking at him before slipping away.  
“Damn,” muttered Dave, utterly deflated, “that is one flighty broad.”


End file.
